Increasingly, petroleum refiners are looking to simulators to answer questions that cannot be easily answered by traditional lumped models. Traditional assay methods use bulk properties such as API to create hypothetical components that are suitable for distillation. However, they lack the necessary information for reactors. Similarly, most commercially available refinery reactors use kinetic lumps that contain enough information to model the chemistry of key conversion units. However, they lack the resolution to accurately model a distillation column or predict various properties. Furthermore, they may not have the chemical detail necessary for accurately predicting how they will interact with downstream units. As refiners look to answer questions of how to meet environmental targets, how to accurately predict petroleum properties, and how to integrate refining and chemical plants, it is becoming evident that a more detailed molecular approach would be beneficial. To this end, Aspen Technology has been focusing on implementing molecular characterization and molecular-based reactors in Aspen HYSYS Petroleum Refining. Molecular characterization can take detailed analytical information that can be used to populate both traditional hypothetical components along with detailed molecular breakdown of what constitutes each of these hypothetical components. This detailed molecular information can be used to accurately predict properties of various crude cuts as well as feed directly to the molecular-based reactors for detailed reactor simulation. Furthermore, molecular-based reactors can be used to accurately predict detailed yields and product properties directly from the molecular composition of the products rather than relying on correlations. Molecular characterization and molecular-based reactors have been integrated into Aspen HYSYS Petroleum Refining so that the molecular composition can propagate from the assay throughout the flowsheet and the molecular composition can be seen at any point of a flowsheet.

Molecular modeling for refining using aspen HYSYS petroleum refining

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.